Pyke shook his head. ‘The fact that this man didn’t shoot you doesn’t mean you’re safe. You need to stay here a while longer, wait for me. Where exactly is this abandoned cottage?’
After she’d told him, Pyke took off his greatcoat and put it around her shoulders. ‘You’re clearly a brave woman, Maggie, but you need to lie low for a while longer. What you know could still be dangerous. I’ll come and find you when I think it’s safe.’
She wrapped the coat around herself and smiled. ‘Cathy liked you a lot, you know.’
Pyke looked at her, not sure what to say.
‘I think a part of her imagined — hoped — that you and she… might, I don’t know, find each other some time in the future.’
Pyke’s mind turned to Cathy’s decomposing corpse, her wrists slit open. A bloody winter, he thought. Another needless death.
It took him the best part of an hour to walk back into the town. He couldn’t see more than a few yards in front of him. Bill Flint was drinking in the taproom of the Three Horse Shoes but he denied helping Johns, said he didn’t know where the former soldier had gone.
‘Apparently there was no kidnapping,’ Pyke said, scrutinising Flint’s reaction. ‘The wife planned it with Johns, hoped to squeeze twenty thousand out of the Hancocks.’
If Flint was surprised by this, he didn’t show it. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘He was helped by some of his friends — radicals.’
Flint’s eyes narrowed. ‘Trying to blame us for the boy’s death now, eh?’
‘I just want answers.’
The Chartist looked around the smoke-filled room. ‘Then you’ll want to hear what this young soldier has to say. He came in here looking for you a few weeks ago. We’ve been hiding him ever since.’
‘Hiding him from?’
Flint shrugged. ‘I’ll let you work that one out.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Just a soldier.’ Flint sniffed. ‘Deserter now, I suppose.’
Outside, the cold was piercing.
‘Didn’t expect to see you again, to be honest,’ Flint said as he led the way along an unlit alley.
‘Think I made off with the ransom money?’
‘Wouldn’t be the first corrupt copper I’ve come across. So where have you been? Why did you come back?’
‘Recovering from a pistol wound.’
‘Someone shot you?’
‘John Wylde.’
Flint stopped and turned around. His chalky face was partly illuminated by the light from a half-open window. ‘Wylde tried to kill you?’
‘Didn’t succeed, though.’
‘I can see that.’ Flint turned and continued along the passageway, then came to a halt outside a door which led into a backyard. ‘Come back to settle some debts, then?’
Pyke tried to put Felix out of his mind. ‘Something like that.’
In the yard, Pyke waited while Flint knocked on the door of the house and whispered a few words to the man who greeted him. They were ushered into the back room, where another man wearing a dark blue woollen shirt was playing cards with a soldier still in uniform. The soldier was young, with cropped hair, pockmarked skin and a thick, almost square face. He stood up and greeted Pyke with an awkward shake of the hand.
‘I served in the Forty-fifth regiment, until I left two weeks ago. We were billeted in Brecon.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Richard Considine.’
Pyke noticed that Flint and the other man had left them alone. ‘What made you leave?’
‘What they made me do…’
Pyke nodded, decided to let the younger man talk.
‘They wanted me to kill someone I’d never seen before, never done us any harm, a civilian.’
‘Let me guess. The shooting took place up near the old quarry, just off the Anderson’s farm road.’
The soldier eyed him warily. ‘Did one of the radicals tell you that?’
‘I was hiding in the cabin at the time. I heard the rifle. The man you shot died in my arms. His name was Deeney. He was an Irishman, lodged in Dowlais.’
‘No one told me his name. Nor what he’d done… to deserve…’ The soldier’s voice started to crack.
‘I guessed you were a trained marksman. A professional. I had a friend look for you at the barracks in Dowlais.’
‘I was never stationed here in Merthyr.’
‘Probably why you were chosen. Clearly you’re good with a Baker’s rifle, too.’
‘The sergeant-major always said I was the best shot in the regiment.’
‘So why did you agree to do it?’
The former soldier didn’t answer immediately. ‘I got into some trouble with a woman, wife of a councillor. I was told I was going to be thrown out of the regiment. Stupid, really.’
‘And all you had to do to clear your name, wipe the slate clean, was to come to Merthyr and do as you were told.’
‘It didn’t seem like too much at the time.’
‘Killing an innocent man?’ Pyke didn’t say this to judge the young soldier, just to indicate that he knew what it meant to take a life. He tried to remember that awful, hollow sensation he had felt after he’d killed for the first time.
The soldier nodded, his expression pale, haunted. ‘Captain said he was a criminal.’
Pyke shook his head. ‘Not true. My guess is that he’d been paid a few coins to go to that cabin and pick up a purse. Just his bad luck he was Irish.’
He now understood what had happened. Someone had planted the rent book on the dead man, directing them to Irish Row and the shoe and coat belonging to William Hancock. Clearly this person had wanted them to suspect an Irish mob.
Considine nodded. ‘That’s what this big fellow told me after he’d tracked me down in Brecon.’
Pyke described John Johns and asked whether this was the man who’d found him.
‘That’s right,’ Considine said, surprised he had been able to identify Johns so quickly.
‘And he persuaded you to come back to Merthyr?’
‘He told me he’d been in my shoes once.’ The young soldier wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘Said he knew how it felt, to kill a civilian in cold blood, made me see what I’d done. He said that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself ’less I tried to put things right.’
Pyke thought about Johns and his friendship with the radicals. He would have known the second letter — directing them to the quarry — hadn’t been sent by the real kidnappers and he’d always had his suspicions that one of the marksmen was a trained soldier.
‘Do you know where that man is now?’
‘Now?’ The soldier shook his head. ‘I just met him once, that time he came to Brecon.’
‘There were two of you up the mountain that day.’
‘That’s right. Me and Captain Kent.’
It took Pyke a moment to place the name. He was the man who’d imposed martial law in Merthyr. ‘Was he the one who gave the orders?’
The soldier nodded. ‘He’ll deny it, of course. He’ll claim I deserted because of what I did, the affair.’
‘Depends who asks.’
‘You don’t understand,’ the soldier said, openly showing his fear for the first time. ‘He won’t stop looking for me and when he finds me, he’ll kill me.’
‘Let me worry about him.’
Considine shot him a puzzled look. ‘Why? What do you intend to do?’
‘That’s my business.’ Pyke kept his expression blank. ‘Kent’s now in Merthyr with your regiment. Apparently he’s taking his orders from a man called Josiah Webb.’
Considine frowned. ‘Only one person Kent ever took orders from.’
Pyke had expected the soldier to jump at the mention of Webb’s name but he hadn’t. ‘Let me guess. Sir Clancy Smyth?’
The young soldier looked at him, still puzzled. ‘Never heard of him.’
Pyke felt his world tilt on its axis and suddenly he saw it; saw what he’d been missing, saw who had killed William Hancock and why. It was all so obvious.
‘Hancock,’ Considine said, ‘Zephaniah Hancock.’
TWENTY-FIVE
TUESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY 1847
Dundrum, Co. Tipperary
The rain was falling as sleet and there were no stars or moonlight to guide Knox, but he knew the track well, knew it as he knew everything else in Dundrum. He fought back another wave of anger. Usually the walk from the church to Quarry Field might have taken him half an hour but Knox covered the distance in ten minutes, running more than walking, impervious to the sleet and cold.